Wallflowers

Beside me the low garden walls burned to the touch, before me the slowly moving stencils of ourselveson the pavement were a slaty blue. And then, still some way before we reached the house, I caught the first faint heady scent wafting from its garden in the heat and stillness.

By the time we had turned through the front gate to see the wallflowers themselves massed around the lawn, the scent had become ampler, headier still. It may, the fragrance, have been less overtly sweet than roses, say, or of lilies, but for me the dull dusky drowsiness of it, in which there was a touch of honeyed fruitiness, had a beauty more profound, it concentrated within itself, then and for evermore, the very depth of a regal summer afternoon as no other scent ever could.

And how the rich warm dies of those flowers, the throng of vibrant reds and oranges unbroken by any other colour seemed to befit that fragrance: smouldering crimsons, some so deep they were almost black, glowing scarlets, ardent oranges, and all, at a little distance, looking velvety, or perhaps ever-so-faintly dusty, as though from flowering so near the road.

Drawn to a particular clump of them, to better intoxicate myself with their smell, I could see just how sumptuous their colours were: some glowed with, if not the same hue, then the same purity of dye that gives anemones and poppies their intensity; others, equally fervent, combined two stains, causing an orange blush or subtly suffusing one red with another, creating the loveliest colours of all. Up close, I could see too that what gave these flowers their appearance of velveteen or faint dustiness was the finest of naps on their petals - and that scattered in among them were clusters of tiny buds, a dull dark maroon, fittingly dusky companions.

Immediately behind the close-packed bed, the old red brickwork of the garden wall, steeped in the

heat, apricot in the unwaveringly benevolent light, wobbled slightly as though, like me, drunk with the wallflowers' scent, drunk with their heavy, slumbrous, depth-of afternoon muskiness...